Visa to Launch Mobile Financial Platform in Pakistan

Visa, through its fully owned arm Fundamo, is planning to launch a new Mobile Financial platform in Pakistan, revealed a report published by Express Tribune.

Report said that Fundamo – which earlier this year partnered with Dhabi Group owned Monet to enter Pakistani Market – will launch visa cards with which customers will be able to make financial transactions through their cellular phones by just using card number and the PIN.

With such a service, customers will not have to get their cards swapped or to be available at point of sale physically, instead they will be able to make their transactions through mobile phones with the same visa card that will be lent to them by the banks.

These visa card will use the same VisaNet technology – a retail electronic payments processing network – which is already handling an average of 150 million transactions every day.

Service is not going to be bank or cellular operator specific, instead customers simply with a Visa Card will be offered all these mobile financial services by default on top of conventional banking services.

The product will be launched after banks and telecom operators integrate their infrastructure to support the platform, “Visa is ready to market the product, it has the full backing of the central bank as well,” the report said.

I would appreciate if Banks would offer the same level of service on Debit cards as they do on credit cards. Enabling same level of transactions as you do on credit card would be a huge plus in my opinion.

I’ll never get a credit card for this simply reason. They can obviously charge me per transaction, but if all they’re after is to fleece customers for money, they can shove it up theirs for all I care.

Shahid Saleem

i use a credit card and *I* am never charged per transaction. in fact, it’s a better thing than debit cards: it’s not linked to my bank account, so if someone steals my card details they cannot empty my account.